photographing food-how to???

formula400

formula400

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lewis
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right i am pastry chef and we are always taking pics of what we do at work.

thing is how they hell can i get them better. the kitchen is quite dim but we have a little place down stairs with better light.

where i want help is the background example:

this is a pro photo from WD-50




and here is one of mine




i can see that i need to think about moving the camera and getting down lower, but as the WD-50 picture shows is they have a plain white back ground. could this be done with some king of white box?? at this moment i dont have a off board flash.

as of now i have a Nikon AF-S nikkor 18-55mm
Lens #2
Nikon AF-S nikkor 55-200
Lens #3
Nikon AF-S nikkor 35mm 1.8

what one would give me better results????

to be frank i dont really have a clue what i am doing, any points or tips of good web sites would be welcomed.
 
formula400 said:
could this be done with some king of white box??
Click to expand...

could be, all manner of ways to do it

try a sheet of paper, youl grasp how it works, im sure

largely impossible to do it right without lights though, you might, however, get away with a lamp, though it depends.

if your trying to get the background white, then use something like paper and use a higher focal length, itl compress the perspective and the background gets bigger in relation to the foreground, which minimizes the area youl have to cover in white.

if you have access to photoshop you can alternatively mask it out and white it, since youd be planning to do that from the begining there are ways of generating that mask pretty easily using blending modes, assuming you have a tripod
 
mmmm pastry....

A light tent is a purpose made enclosure with one side missing so you can point your camera into it. Shine some lights at the required directions and voila, your pics will look like the first pic. With some practice.
 
The image will brighten up a lot, I tweeked the exposure set the WB for the plate and added a bit of clarity.

Edit, it looks nice.

5538151737_b6cff84881.jpg
 
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Looks like a light tent or white table cloth to me as well but could be wrong. But as others have said flash would be a big help. I would Probably use your 55-200mm lens, set it up on a tripod if you have one and use bounce flash from the ceiling if you can to direct light back onto the top of the dish. If you look at the first picture you'll see that it's out of focus at the front of the dish and also at the rear of the dish which makes me think a wide aperture was set something like f2.8 your lens probably only stops down to f4 so go with the widest aperture possible.
 
swanseamale47 said:
The image will brighten up a lot, I tweeked the exposure set the WB for the plate and added a bit of clarity.

Edit, it looks nice.

5538151737_b6cff84881.jpg
Click to expand...



hmmmm pretty cool that, right light tent or a SB400, or if there another chep flash i should look at.

i need to take the tripod to work as well and see how it goes.
 
Check highlights and shadows on pictures you like to try and work out where the light source is coming from. Once you learn that, you can work out any photograph setup :)
 
the sb 400 cant bounce your flash. you may need a macro ring. or a sb 600 which you can bounce off the ceiling
 
123paradox321 said:
the sb 400 cant bounce your flash. you may need a macro ring. or a sb 600 which you can bounce off the ceiling
Click to expand...

The SB400 can bounce but it can only tilt in one direction. So in landscape format it tilts up only. You can use a bounce card in other situations.

Have a look here http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/sb400.htm
It is not as fantastic as uncle Ken makes out but it is a lot lot better than the pop up flash.

As has already been said a white piece of paper or cloth will do as a background.

A quick shot
DSC_3659.jpg
[/IMG]

and the "set up" :D
DSC_3660.jpg
[/IMG]
 
Lights could be the best option, and editing will help as shown above.

But you can get a much better image out of the camera if you adjust your exposure compensation 1 of 2 stops up.

This is required because the main part of the image is White. camera meters always assume an average of grey colour. This is why the White plate is showing up as grey.
 
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